Origin from 841
Emperor Wuzong's Huichang-era campaign, driven by fiscal seizure of monastic wealth and hostility to foreign religion, targeted Buddhism above all but explicitly extended to Manichaeism in 843 and then to Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity, the Church of the East, in the culminating 845 edict, with clergy forcibly laicised and temples closed. Historians generally regard this as the event that broke the Church of the East in China; it never substantially recovered in the medieval period, and the persecution is the likely occasion for the later burial of the Xi'an Stele, the community's own foundational monument, recorded separately as this atlas's own account of the mission's 635 to 781 arrival.
Facts
Dates
End Year845 CE is the culminating edict of Emperor Wuzong's Huichang-era campaign, which explicitly named Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity alongside its main target, Buddhism; the persecution broke the Church of the East in China and it never substantially recovered there in the medieval period. Learn More
How the Huichang Suppression Affected Christianity in Tang China
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Emperor Wuzong's Huichang era campaign against organised religion in Tang China was driven chiefly by the state's wish to seize monastic wealth and by hostility toward foreign religion generally, and it targeted Buddhism above every other faith. The campaign widened as it went: it was extended explicitly to Manichaeism in 843, and then, in the culminating edict of 845, to Zoroastrianism and to Nestorian Christianity, the Church of the East, with clergy across all these faiths forcibly laicised and their temples closed.
Historians generally regard the 845 edict as the event that broke the Church of the East's presence in China outright, a community that never substantially recovered there through the rest of the medieval period. The persecution is considered the likely occasion for the burial, for safekeeping, of the community's own great monument from its earlier, tolerated era.
What this changed for Christianity's spread was the effective end of a Christian presence in China that had continued since the seventh century, brought down not by rejection of Christianity specifically but by a fiscal and xenophobic campaign that happened to catch it alongside Buddhism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism in the same net. It would be centuries before another sustained Christian mission reached China again.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Occurred In
Tang China, centred on the capital Chang'an.
Spread Event Of
The reversal that ends the Church of the East's Tang China arc, left with no ending when this hop was dropped from the earlier cap-constrained pass; restored so the arrival at 635 to 781 does not read as an arc with no close.
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